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Future Fighters Won't Need Ejection Seats

Posted by timothy on from the top-gun-will-just-be-the-uppermost-gun dept.

Dr. Tom writes "The U.S. has deployed more than 11,000 military drones, up from fewer than 200 in 2002. They carry out a wide variety of missions while saving money and American lives. Within a generation they could replace most manned military aircraft, says John Pike, a defense expert at the think tank GlobalSecurity.org. Pike suspects that the F-35 Lightning II, now under development by Lockheed Martin, might be 'the last fighter with an ejector seat, and might get converted into a drone itself.' The weakest link is the pilot. A jet could pull 15 Gs, out-turning any conventional aircraft, except it would kill the pilot. Is it time to stop spending billions on obsolete aircraft?"

7 of 622 comments (clear)

  1. Hope no one hacks our entire Air Force one day by crazyjj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nah, no one could ever do that.

    --
    What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
    1. Re:Hope no one hacks our entire Air Force one day by rtaylor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why send up one sophisticated aircraft when you could sent up 10,000 really dumb ones.

      Send up a cloud of drones with the expectation that 20% will be sacrificed for defence of the group.

      --
      Rod Taylor
  2. No by jjeffries · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People in the military need to be injured or killed in war, to remind everyone that it is fucking terrible and that no one should *want* to do it.

    1. Re:No by JDG1980 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People in the military need to be injured or killed in war, to remind everyone that it is fucking terrible and that no one should *want* to do it.

      Automated drones are just the culmination of a decades-long trend in the U.S. towards enabling warfare by insulating the bulk of the population from its costs. During WWI and WWII, a universal draft meant that virtually every able-bodied man had to go to war, and those on the home front shared the sacrifice through work requirements, rationing, and higher taxes. In Vietnam, though, affluent Americans were able to avoid any impact of the war on their own families thanks to the college exemption from the draft. This meant that only the working classes bore the brunt of the war. And on the home front, life was far closer to normal than it was during the World Wars – the war was funded through deficit spending, not increased taxes, and there was no rationing. After Vietnam, the draft was ended, so even those Americans who didn't go to college would not be shipped off to the military unless they signed up. The result was that the first Iraq War met with very little opposition, since no one except volunteer soldiers was at any risk at all, and even then casualties were minimal. The longer campaigns in Afghanistan and in the second Iraq War led to additional backlash against the casualties among volunteer soldiers, hence the move to drones. Basically, the American political elites figured out that if Americans don't have to see American soldiers die in war, then they can do whatever they want overseas and no one will try to stop them.

  3. Better use of money and effort by ZorroXXX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it time to stop spending billions on obsolete aircraft?

    It is time to stop spending billions on military weapons in general; sadly weapon is the world's largest trading goods. If all that money had been spent more wisely the world could have been a much safer and better place.

    --
    When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
  4. Re:There will always be a physological need by MBGMorden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Any system can be hacked. Having humans directly in the loop is the basic Wargames lesson. ...
    And that is exactly what these drones should NEVER be allowed to do. And that's the basic Terminator lesson.

    Because our military should really be basing decisions on fictional movies.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  5. Re:There will always be a physological need by JDG1980 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because our military should really be basing decisions on fictional movies.

    Well-written fiction often speaks to real-world concerns. George Orwell's 1984 was also fictional, but it was and is taken seriously as a cautionary tale, and rightly so.

    Sure, it's unlikely that an evil sentient computer will declare nuclear war on humanity, but one reason why the Terminator films are so popular is that they address real-world anxieties about how our lives are increasingly dominated by technology. It's perfectly reasonable to ask whether bad consequences could result from taking humans out of the loop, especially on military decisions.